


A Tale of Two

by capitainpistol



Category: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice
Genre: F/M, Intimacy, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-05
Updated: 2016-09-05
Packaged: 2018-08-13 05:19:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7963981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/capitainpistol/pseuds/capitainpistol
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce and Lois meet once, fifteen years ago, and again, after Clark's death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Tale of Two

**Author's Note:**

> [posted to tumblr](http://twoquickdeaths.tumblr.com/post/149980477745/bruce-x-lois-fic)

Beyond the cacophony of reporters asking him questions he’s known the answers to since he was a child, Bruce caught her profile. The one reporter he wanted to meet that night, the one making the Gotham Times twist in their pants. Lois Lane. She completely ignored him.

In her editorial picture, red hair cascaded down to her shoulders in shiny waves. At this time of night and in this raucous company, she had those elegant, old Hollywood locks in a bun at the back of her head, held up by crossed pens she constantly reached for and put back in between scribbling in her palm sized notebook.

Lois Lane drank Scotches neat and she drank few of them inconspicuously as she helmed the group of local millionaires and city celebrities gathered around her at the bar. All of them reduced to hometown cheerleaders, including Lois herself.

High definition screens blared, and the hooting and laughing, betting and belching filled the vast dimly lit private club.

Metropolis vs. Gotham.

The ancient feud.

She was an anomaly, a Metropolitan shark in waters infected by curious Gothamites.

“Excuse me,” said Bruce, cutting off a reporter.

He made sure to give his table a smarmy grin when he left them. A practiced, precise turn of the lips that made half of them roll their eyes. The other half were charmed, already writing him off as aloof. Their work finished at the end of the night with a couple of quick searches online for the longevity of childhood post-traumatic stress.

Everyone knew, and even if they hated him, everyone was sorry.

Didn’t stop the persona he was cultivating from getting dragged through the press. He obliged. Falsifying men’s hopes and all that.

Bruce sat at the outskirts, ordering his drink without speaking a word. He owned the hotel, knew the bartender well, and was technically the host.

Lois caught his eye, her own bright blue ones sparkling with recognition, but she returned to her crew, buying the next round to cheering applause.

She made it clear she worked for the Daily Planet, deterring no one. If anything, they wanted to make a good impression and laid themselves bare. Sharing secrets best kept in the dark, not exactly sure or worried about why or how Lois got them to that point. Her attention felt genuine, and from the looks of it, Bruce guessed she honestly was.

At the end of the night, her book was full of anecdotes, her cheeks flushed from the heat of taking shots every commercial break.

“You’re just going to sit there all night?” She asked after the bar cleared except for the two of them. “I’m impressed.”

Bruce pushed a Scotch neat in front of her. “You don’t like me, do you?”

Lois smiled at him, raised an eyebrow and then the glass. “I don’t know you, Mr. Wayne,” she said slyly, taking the shot.

“Good,” he said, and sat closer.

Good people, that’s Lois Lane.

She didn’t write him off at all, clicking the pen back to it’s dormant stage in her hair and meeting him eye to eye. He didn’t ask her about her job, she didn’t ask him about world sojourn then segway tactlessly into his dead parents.

Instead they went deep into the feud between their cities. Gotham was founded first, but Metropolis built their skyscrapers faster. Metropolis’s teams won more trophies, but Gotham players were better loved. Super villains liked both equally. Back and back they went, pealing back the centuries until ending up at the sores of Troy by the Agamemnon’s armada.

“Ah, but which is which?” she asked, and neither wanted to know the answer.

When she realized she lost her key, Bruce made a call and had her bumped.

They stumbled in through the elevator door when it dinged open to the massive penthouse apartment.

Over the glittering Gotham lights, beyond the harbor, stood Metropolis. Lois stared out the floor to ceiling windows as she dangled off Bruce’s arm. She didn’t know what was more striking, the view, Bruce Wayne’s muscles, or Bruce Wayne’s chivalry.

Definitely the view, but Bruce was easy on the eyes, too.

Lois tore her eyes off her beautiful city to look at him. Really look at him.

She wanted to thank him for the room, but instead said, “You’re incredibly tall.” She had to arch her neck.

“And your liver is yay big,” said Bruce, gesturing a wide berth with his arms.

Kicking off her shoes, she became even smaller, standing more than a foot shorter. “I thought you were a flabby playboy.”

Bruce pretended to be offended. “I do take care of myself, Miss Lane.”

“Miss Lane,” she repeated, liking the politeness.

Lois believed him. He was not just muscly. He was built. Hard. Like a soldier.

That kind of definition only came with months and months of training and dedication. Discipline.

Who was he, really, if he could devote himself to physical perfection?

To what end?

What did she actually know about him? Rich. Murdered parents. Returned by the world, they no longer wanted him.

His gray eyes were intense, full of _something_ , and all the papers had somehow missed it.

The world was a big place, he could’ve gone anywhere, learned anything.

Lois swallowed down hard, realizing she had become silent. She’d grabbed onto him and balanced herself with his arms.

“I’m going to take a shower,” she said, otherwise the questions would pour out of her.

Bruce went for a kiss.

Lois tilted her head to let it land on her cheek.

“I’m sorry,” she said, suddenly bursting out laughing. “Really. I am. I didn’t mean flabby. I mean. Everything you read.” She raked him with her eyes, up and down, still touching him. “You’re really charming. Actually charming.”

“Surprised?”

She made a face that said she absolutely was not. Intrigued was the better word. “That’s two for three. You’re crazy good looking. You’re nice.”

“The third?”

“Obviously, you will be the perfect man if you can beat me at Fate.”

Bruce wondered how drunk she really was. “Fate?”

“Pick up that big… phone of yours and order us a deck of cards. Then we can talk.”

Bruce decided on a shower too, after Lois came out in a comfy cotton robe. She set up the table by the windows looking out at her city, and ordered junk food. By 4 am, they were on their second pizza, playing Fate and a combination of other card games entirely dependent on chance. The minibar stayed closed.

At dawn, Lois stifled a yawn. She looked at Bruce, wide-awake and focused seriously on his hand.

“You’re very sweet, you know that?”

The Bruce Wayne she’d heard and read about was nothing like this broody weirdo. Not the Lex Luthor of Gotham, as he was called back home. Sure, he was intense, but also kind and patient, and besides the single un-landed kiss earlier, he hadn’t made another pass at her.

“I have been called many things, Miss Lane, but sweet is not one of them.”

That she believed. “You haven’t said Off the Record either.”

He picked out a card and said casually, “I trust you.”

“You just met me.”

He looked deeply into her eyes… and then yawned.

“Sooo, he is human after all.” She set her cards down and did the same to his. 

Lois took him by the hand and led him to the bed, undoing his robe and sliding it off his shoulders. She looked down between them and licked her lips.

“That part I heard about you is true,” she said with a grin.

They kissed and touched and when they dropped on the bed, all of his muscles were taut and firm, contracting as he lowered himself by inches. His strength turned her on. She kissed him softly, savoring the purr he let out when she took him in her hand to guide him inside of her.

But suddenly, Bruce stopped her, hard on in her grasp. He took a deep breath with his eyes closed, and in one quick move jumped off her to sit rigid at the edge of the bed.

“What is it?” She asked, voice soft with sympathy.

Lois sat next to him, naked and warm, and she rubbed his back, nuzzling her face on his shoulder. He had scars on his back, and try as she might to turn off her reporter brain, she was curious as well as concerned.

He didn’t just work out, then. He got into frays that left him scarred. But she didn’t ask how. Instead she asked:

“What’s wrong?”

Bruce jerked away from her, almost causing her to fall. He put on his pants, grabbed his shirt and jacket and went to the stair exit. “The night’s taken care of. Don’t worry about the room.” He pulled the door angrily. “Print whatever you want.”

It would be fifteen years before Lois Lane saw Bruce again.

 

*

 

Bruce approached her like treading a minefield, gracious enough not to bother with a polite hello.

City slickers used to white noise. The Kansas stars blinked silently above them, and without any trees, there were no crickets to fill the noiseless void, no wind to make the wheat hiss.

“This is exactly how I thought Clark’s barn would look like,” he said quietly, trying to take the bite out of his naturally rough and guttural voice.

Lois hugged herself tighter, despite it being a nice warm night. She moved not one bit as he stepped closer to come into the light of the barn, but her eyes followed him like a hawk.

“It was his Dad’s first. Clark preferred it up there, but Jonathan kept an office down stairs.” She grabbed a flashlight on a table full of old, dusty junk. “Want to see it?”

Bruce nodded. Hands kept obviously in his pockets. He followed her down to the cellar. The place had a strange smell, not stale but not clean either. 

“They kept his spaceship here,” Lois said.

His keen eyes caught the dusty outline where the ship once stood. He almost reached, imagining the ship there. Imagining the ship on Krypton. The ship flying off with Clark as his whole world exploded underneath him.

Bruce swallowed down hard, an apology hurting his throat. He was about to speak, when she pointed the light at the adjacent wall.

“Jonathan Kent kept track of UFO sightings and strange happenings.”

Yellowed and old news clippings formed a wall-to-wall collage of all the weird things that happened in and around the United States, the world, and the mysterious saves in Smallville.

Bruce spotted many that aligned with his own metahuman research. The one he closed in on: a school bus inexplicably rising from the water, back when Clark was only fourteen.

Just over fifteen years ago.

So young, he thought suddenly, and when he looked at Lois, her eyes held the same warm sympathy he remembered from their long, strange night together.

“Smart man.”

“Jury’s out on that one. He never wanted Clark to reveal himself.”

At her slight eyebrow raise, he bit down on a smile. Maybe they weren’t quite friends, maybe she’d never forgive him, but it was easy somehow.

In their eagerness to move things along without awkwardness, they crashed awkwardly on their way to leave.

“Please,” he said, backing away, hand out like a concierge. He even bowed a little.

“You did the same thing when we almost screwed in your penthouse,” she said walking pass him, to get him to stop being so damn polite.

Bruce coughed and backed away in earnest, watching her go up the stairs at an easy pace.

“You remember that?”

Lois was tempted to shut the cellar door on his head, but remembered that Martha liked him and she’d invited him over for dinner too.


End file.
